tarchon

This UK supernatural genre series, probably trying to capitalize on the success of Being Human, actually does manage to be OK. It's not great, but the 1st season cast does have some chemistry. Where it gets a little shaky is the ghost-of-the-week plots, which somehow feel formulaic just halfway into the first 6 episode run. Unfortunately, if you find yourself getting into the 1st season, you will be utterly disappointed by the 2nd season. Like a lot of struggling shows, the producers of this one apparently decided to replace most of the cast after the 1st season cliffhanger; or maybe they just quit. The 1st season is mentioned a little in the 2nd season, but little is explained, and even the two left-over characters have, let's say, dramatic personality shifts. Season 2 is effectively a different show with the same sets. Even more unfortunately, the creatives seem to have been under the delusion that there was going to be a 3rd season, so the considerably weaker 2nd season doesn't really wrap its own plot, much less the 1st season's. Abandon all hope of closure, ye who enter here.

I saw the trailers for this. But I like Sofia Boutella. After some self-debate, I did start to watch it, and it does have lots of Sofia Boutella in it.

After a while, it dawned on me that I should think of it as a live-action cartoon, and from then I could enjoy watching Sofia Boutella more. Also entertaining, was thinking about all the other movies it reminded me of, since there sure are a lot of them. I'm also pretty sure I saw landscapes from World of Warcraft.

It has a plot, but it's one of those plots where they could have just told you what it is in a couple sentences and you'd be like "oh yeah, that one, I know that one, that's a good plot. Oh, no, no, you don't have to fill in the names and whatall - I got it." This film would be way better with no exposition at all, no voiceover, no flashbacks. When you're doing something this familiar, and fully conscious of its familiarity, it just does not help anything when you sit us down and explain it all. I get "space Nazi" - this is like the 20th film I've seen with these exact same space Nazis; it's just wasting our time to keep going on about how these guys are space Nazis. When exposition is expounded with something like this, it really has to be a tale of extraordinary interest to be worth slowing it all down to fill in the backstory. Do you really think you cleared that bar? Honestly?

The CG artists sure worked hard on it, lots of cool art.

Surprisingly the fight sequences don't work that well. Are those supposed to be like squirt guns? They squirt stuff. Really, it's like they squirt yellow goo that splatters around and glows and only kills people when it's convenient for the scene. It always seems weird to me when movies have sci fi space guns that are less effective than actual guns. Like, did they forget how to make bullets in the future? Maybe it's in the past, which could be why their agricultural technology is somewhere around early Bronze Age level.

Yup, live action cartoon with Sofia Boutella.